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Almost half of new electricity is now clean and green

IT’S a lot of clean power. Almost half of new electricity generation is renewable, and the costs of wind and solar power are falling sharply. It “should give governments confidence to forge a robust climate agreement” next year, says Achim Steiner, director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

This comes a week before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on how to prevent climate change, which will stress quick conversion to renewables.

Published on 7 April, the latest annual Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment reveals that 44 per cent of all generating capacity installed last year around the world was renewable. That is despite a 14 per cent decline in investment.

But the politics of green energy are changing fast. The bubble seems to have burst in Europe, which has cut investment by 44 per cent. For more than a decade the continent was in the vanguard of clean energy, led by Germany. Now China is the world leader, investing &dollar;56 billion in green power last year.

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Renewables kept 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted in 2013, says report author Ulf Moslener of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Germany. Thanks to falling costs, more projects are being built without any subsidy. Shares in clean-energy companies, in free fall since the start of the global recession, rose 54 per cent last year.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Half of new electricity is green”